Philippines No Longer Interested in American Attack Helicopters - Which Other Suppliers Could Replace Them
The armed forces of the Philippines will reportedly no longer consider acquiring American attack helicopters, and due to the considerable cost of the models being marketed to the Southeast Asian state Manilla will look elsewhere for alternative models. This follows moves by Washington to approve the sale of AH-64E Apache and AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters to the country - the former a high end heavyweight design and the latter a lighter but much less capable one. Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana stated regarding the need to look way from the United States to meet requirements for attack helicopters: “I think that’s $1.5 billion to $2 billion for six attack helicopters. We cannot afford that. We only have an allocation of P13 billion ($256 million), so if we will buy with that amount, we can only buy one or two units. That’s why we are looking at other countries where we can buy a few more with the same amount,”
AH-64E Apache Attack Helicopter
A number of other suppliers can potentially provide the Philippines with the aircraft it needs at a much lower cost, with Russia in particular standing out as a leading potential source. Russia and the Philippines have seen relations steadily improve under the latter’s Rodrigo Duterte administration, with Russian ships paying port visits and providing the Southeast Asian state with arms. Russia is also a leading contender to provide the Philippines with attack submarines to protect its waters, although considerable Western political pressure has since been applied to prevent Manilla from accepting such a sale. Russia is itself a leading exporter of attack helicopters, and while its Ka-52 platform is considerably newer and overall considered more capable than the Apache, a cheaper design such as the Mi-35 may be considered more suitable. Other suppliers of attack helicopters are relatively few, and while China has recently developed more
advanced variants of the Z-10 platform the state of relations between Beijing and Manilla will make such a sale unlikely. South Korea is also developing a line of promising attack helicopters, and has been a
major supplier of arms to the Philippines in the past including fighter jets, but its aircraft are unlikely to be ready in time to meet the country’s defence needs.
militarywatchmagazine.com
